Fist of the North Star is legendary. Even people unfamiliar with the story of the martial artist Kenshiro traveling a post-apocalyptic, Mad Max-inspired Earth know his famous catchphrase: “You are already dead.” Besides one-liners, FOTNS also offers great gory fights, colorful villains and cathartic themes of justice for the weak, and the best part is that you can choose how to experience it all.

There are 27 volumes of the manga, over 150 episodes of the Toei anime that ran from 1983 to 1988, novels, a live-action film, video games and even a stage musical. We are GOOD on Fist of the North Star content. But that’s not the only reason why the new FOTNS anime series, which premiered on April 11, wasn’t really necessary.

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Trading In an Unnaturally Stiff Look for Absolutely Nothing

Fist of the North Star (2026) comes to us from TMS Entertainment, home to Dr. Stone, Lupin the 3rd, Case Closed and other well-received shows. Do not expect that level of animation here. TMS’ adaptation of the story written by Buronson (penname of Yoshiyuki Okamura) and illustrated by Tetsuo Hara is fully CGI, which TMS has been employing for a while but never to this extent and it shows.

CGI in anime is not inherently a problem. The sequel to the Trigun reboot, Stargaze (2026), was 3DCG, which, yes, did make the characters look a bit like puppeteered action figures when they were standing around and talking. But when the action hit, it was a thing of beauty. The camera danced around while keeping the proportions of the characters intact (something occasionally lost with 2D animation), allowing for a whole new world of high-octane anime action. This approach would have been welcomed with open arms by long-time fans of FOTNS and newcomers to the series. Characters looking like they are wearing plastic hair molds on their heads is a small price to pay for transcendental action.

But the fight scenes simply aren’t anything to write home about. The camera work is static, there are no heart-pumping long-take shots where the CGI could really shine, and the whole thing rarely goes beyond Kenshiro delivering a kick or a punch with a bit more fluidity than in the ‘80s anime. But not by much. And, honestly, if we’re comparing the two shows, then the original Fist of the North Star, with its limited animation from well over 40 years ago, does hold up much better than everything that we’ve seen from TMS so far.

Not Taking Full Advantage of the Visual Medium That Is Anime

In the interest of fairness, it’s worth mentioning that the computer-animated Fist of the North Star does follow the manga much more closely than previous anime. So close that some shots from the new show are straight-up computer copies of the manga panels. Here’s the thing about that, though. What works in manga doesn’t always translate well to an animated medium. It’s fine to tweak and add things to adaptations that would have broken the flow of a comic as long as it utilizes the visual medium of animation.

The ‘80s anime understood that assignment well by throwing in occasional flashbacks to some characters’ past, which are only talked about in the manga and the 2026 series. Another way that the old Fist of the North Star improved the story was by bringing in the occasional comic relief a little bit sooner, like with the orphan thief Bat. Eventually, the creators of the manga figured out that a story that’s all darkness, all sadness and all violence all the time would ultimately start to feel repetitive, so they started using the odd gag or absurd situations to offset this. But those weren’t there in the very beginning.

The CGI FOTNS had the benefit of decades of hindsight to consider fixing this but they didn’t, deciding instead to stick religiously to the manga, and the anime suffers for it. It’s an animated series that’s paced like a comic book, and the two do not work well together. Never in a tale of a lone martial arts genius fighting post-apocalyptic murderers — who make Lord Humungus from Mad Max 2 look tiny — should a viewer ever feel, well, bored. And yet here we are.

Relying Too Much on Violence and Gore

There’s no denying that a big draw of Fist of the North Star are the ultra-bloody, ultra-gory killing techniques employed by Kenshiro. His Hokuto Shinken fighting style targets pressure points on the body that cause it to react in ways that would make Eli Roth uneasy. Strike the right part of the head and your opponent explodes from within, their nogging splitting open like an overripe melon. Hit another point and your opponent’s body will twist backwards until their muscles crush their spine. The ‘80s anime couldn’t show that.

Their solution was to omit a lot of the blood, and when it had to make an appearance, to color it glowing white or black. The end result is definitely cheesy, although the censorship did force the old shows to get more creative with the kills, sometimes showing them through shadows and really upping the implied body-horror that Kenshiro was inflicting on his enemies. This left most of the gore to your imagination, but thanks to the skillful use of hand-drawn animation, it ended up really cool.

2026’s Fist of the North Star does not have those kinds of constraints. It will show you the inside of a bad guy’s brain within the first few minutes of Episode 1. When the CGI villains explode from within, you get to see in full detail how their heads just open up and spill on the ground. For veteran fans of gory action, the new anime delivers the goods… But, again, it’s nothing that we haven’t seen before. The 2003 – 2004 original video animation (OVA) New Fist of the North Star was partially made to give fans all the gore they’ve been missing all these years. In most places, it’s much more violent than the new anime.

So, in the end, what can the latest adaptation of Buronson’s and Hara’s comic offer us? Nothing original BUT it does give us a remake of the original anime’s opening Ai o Torimodose!! performed by Toshl (of X Japan), which is a bona fide work of art. Decide for yourself if that’s enough to justice the new anime’s existence.

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Updated On April 27, 2026